Exile Vilify
by Octopus Laboratories
Summary: A one-shot about Chell finding one of Rattman's dens and letting Wheatley share in her discoveries.


"Hey, what are you doing? I- I can't see you, what are you doing in there?"

Wheatley had found Chell in one of GLaDOS' test chambers featuring 'advanced aerial faith plates', approaching her while she was in the air before she fell down and disappeared into a bright blue portal. He had looked around - for as far as his management rail allowed him to - for the orange portal that accompanied the blue one.

It was situated on a rather peculiar place, not at all aimed at the exit, which was fairly easy to reach from here. Instead, it was aimed at a small alcove in the wall across, which puzzled Wheatley. He couldn't see any further in the alcove, but he knew it was bigger than it looked, because Chell was nowhere to be found.

"Are you still there? Where'd you go? _Helloooo?_" the little personality core called, becoming impatient.

Chell had paced around to examine the painted walls of the alcove, trying to make sense of the drawings and text scrawled across them. She had found this room while using the aerial faith plates, soaring through the air. Quickly, she had portaled up to it before she could respond to the personality core suddenly approaching her on his management rail. Before they both knew it, she was in the alcove.

Chell snapped out of her thought at the sound of a desperate metal ball suspended by a rail just outside the alcove. Wow. Even though he wasn't the curiosity core Chell threw in the incinerator after her first confrontation with GLaDOS, he was still pretty damn curious.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey, _HEY- AAGH!_"

Wheatley screamed at the movement of a head popping up from around the corner, but quickly regained his composure when he recognized Chell's face. The little core instantly began to blabber on while Chell raised an eyebrow at him as the rest of her body came back into the view of his one optic, which he rolled around in a sigh. "Oh, _for God's sake_, this is the second time you've bloody scared me today. Couldn't you at least drop a hint, a cough, anything? Hey, I'm sorry for bothering you but I think we need to move on, and quickly. It won't be long until she finds us, and, ah, I don't want to think about what would happen if-"

He was cut off by Chell's hands on his hull, determined to pull him inside the alcove. Wheatley screamed, instinctively disengaging himself from the management rail. Chell had not anticipated this however, and they both shot back against the wall, Wheatley falling into Chell's lap.

Taking a moment to recollect themselves, the two apparent 'partners', as Wheatley so gladly called himself and Chell, gazed out the alcove. Their gaze was met with a cold white wall, showing the test chamber's exit with a beautiful orange frame decorating its surface. Chell had never bothered to look closely at the portals she created, but sitting here with the best friend she could have at the moment and taking a break from testing, Chell felt content looking at the warm orange swirl that made up the frame of the orange portal. It was a beautiful sight, and apparently the little robot in her lap thought so too, because for the first time she experienced a content silence from him.

However, he was once again the first one to break the silence (not that Chell could ever do that though). "Say, um, were you going to tell me why you were taking so long or should we move on? Come on, I mean, the exit is right _there!_ We could just- just jump down from 'ere and-"

Chell picked up the core as she stood up, and walked further into the alcove, reaching the part where it seemed like someone has made this part of the test chamber into their own makeshift room. Empty cups were scattered across the floor, presumably having contained coffee since the room reeked of it. Jugs and cans of water and packets of cheese were neatly divided over the corners of the room. Paintings, drawings and fragments of what appeared to be a song or a poem decorated the walls.

"Well will you look at that! Seems like someone made themselves quite at home here, didn't they?" The sphere in Chell's hands sounded impressed, turning his bright blue optic to examine each wall until he spotted one particular painting of a beautiful young woman. Wheatley briefly looked at Chell briefly, then back to the painting again. Chell gave him a puzzled look before he cried out, "hey, the woman in the painting looks just like you!"

And then it struck her. She hadn't been able to look at herself properly in a mirror, but she had definitely caught a glimpse of herself in her own portals. Chell walked towards the painting Wheatley was gesturing towards with his optic and examined it closely. How would anyone have known her? Had they been in the facility all this time, following her? Then why didn't they approach her? Or maybe they were long dead? Or maybe they're relatives-

Chell's train of thought was interrupted by a scream from Wheatley at a crow cawing from the other side of a small opening in the wall. With a sigh, the woman shoed it away with her foot, causing a long string of rapid 'thank you's to come from the voice box of the core in her hands. She ignored them however, noticing the bird had dropped something in the room before it flew away. It was a radio, not unlike the ones she had seen around the facility a million times by now. Frankly, they were getting quite annoying, always emitting the same ominous music (well, it surely started to sound ominous after the first five times) if they were not transmitting ridiculous and annoyingly sounding Morse code that she wasn't able to understand.

But this one was different. It was playing something in a very soft tune, so Chell sat down and fiddled with the rusty volume button until it was at a high enough volume for her to hear. Wheatley rolled out of her arms and settled down on the floor before whispering, "What's this?"

Chell didn't respond. She put the radio on the floor and sat back against the wall, relaxing. The soothing, yet sad music filled the room. There was nothing but silence coming from either the core or the woman.

_"Does it feel like a trial?"_ The voice coming from the radio was just as soothing as the piano accompanying it. Chell recognized the lyrics, finding the same phrases written on the walls. _"Does it trouble your mind the way you troubled mine?"_ Soon, Wheatley found himself back in Chell's lap with her arms around him and her head resting on top of his hull. Was she sleeping? He couldn't tell. He could only hear her soft breathing and the music the radio was emitting. "Well, I guess we could use some rest then. But afterwards, we're gonna try and escape," Wheatley whispered, "I _promise_."

Wheatley closed the shutters on his optic, even though as a robot, he could not sleep. To be honest, he had absolutely no plan with which to take down GLaDOS other than temporarily shut off her main weapons – the turret production line and the neurotoxin generator. But he would think of that later, this moment was too good to pass up. It was nothing he had ever felt before, something peaceful. Suddenly nothing else but this moment mattered.

They were lost, but they were content.

_"Vilify  
>Don't even try."<em>


End file.
